“My influence over him would wear off on its own, eventually.” He turned and took my arm, wobbling ever so slightly as he did. Worry entered his tone. “You are healed, aren’t you, Zorah?”
“I’m okay.” I put a hand on his shoulder, trying to steady him. “What about you, though? Can’t you… I don’t know… shift into mist and leave the bullets behind, or something?”
He shook his head. “I’m form-bound until I get this silver shite out of me. It’s not like lead; I can’t just will it out of my flesh. Your mate said he trained as an EMT. And after the last thirty minutes, I expect he’ll be happy enough for an excuse to jam a knife in my back once we get somewhere a bit more private. He can pull the bullets out for me, and then I’ll be right as rain.”
All at once, I became acutely aware that I was standing on the sidewalk of an upscale residential road, wearing a latex dress and thigh-high boots while my shirtless male companion dripped blood onto the concrete.
How was this my life now?
“Will you be okay until then?” I asked.
He shrugged a shoulder. “Some of that silver is closer to my heart than I’d like, but I promise not to check out on you before we get to the motel. I’m well aware of what’s at stake.”
Of course he would be, even if I’d forgotten all about it during the excitement. If he died, I died.
“That wasn’t why I asked,” I mumbled.
He caught my chin and pulled me into a quick kiss.
“I know it wasn’t, luv,” he said, once he’d pulled back. A car engine rumbled toward us. “Oh, good. I’ll wager that’s your bloke now.”
I followed his gaze to find a nondescript four-door sedan pulling up. The passenger window rolled down to reveal Tristan looking straight ahead, unmoving. Len ducked his head, catching my eye from the driver’s seat.
“Get in the back,” he said. “The further away we are from this place, the happier I’ll be.”
To say Len looked unhappy right now was putting it mildly. We got in the back of the car, and my heart stuttered with fresh worry as a grunt of pain escaped past Rans’ control. Len glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
“You sure about the hospital?” he asked. “You look like shit. Couldn’t you mind-fuck one of the doctors into fixing you up, or something?”
“No hospital,” Rans insisted. “Please just drive.”
I wrapped a hand in the sleeve of Rans’ coat, as if I could somehow keep anything else bad from happening to him if I physically held onto him. Len shut his mouth and hit the accelerator, heading toward Interstate 64 where we could doubtless have our pick of the cheap hotels clustered around the exits.
On some level, it surprised me that Len hadn’t freaked out yet about the fact that Tristan was still under Rans’ hypnotic control. I was willing to bet that Len had taken time to check his boyfriend’s vitals during the small delay while they were getting the car. He must have determined that Tristan was physically okay—otherwise, I suspected we’d be hurtling toward the nearest hospital whether Rans protested or not. Regardless, though, I’d expected Len to demand that Rans release control of Tristan’s mind before now.
Almost as if he’d heard my thoughts, Len shot me a glance in the mirror. “I’m taking a lot of this on faith, Z. But I expect some goddamned answers when we get where we’re going.”
“I know,” I said, squeezing Rans’ sleeve harder. “I’m sorry, Len. The last thing I wanted was for you or anyone else to get sucked into this mess.”
Len made a low noise of acknowledgement and turned his attention back to the road. Fifteen minutes later, we pulled up to the front office of a questionable looking motel with a faded sign proclaiming the place to be the Arrowhead Motor Lodge. Though it was hard to be certain with several of the letters missing, apparently the Arrowhead boasted both ‘FREE TV’ and ‘IN-ROOM REFRIGERATORS.’
There was no mention of whether the televisions actually worked, or how long it might have been since the refrigerators in question were last cleaned. I scrubbed a hand over my face, remembering an instant too late that I was wearing makeup thick enough that it had practically required a trowel to apply.
Wonderful. Now I could probably add ‘raccoon eyes’ to the fashion statement I was making.
“I’m… arguably… still fully dressed,” I said. “Do you want me to book the room? Does anyone have cash?”
Somehow, this didn’t seem like the kind of place that would require a credit card, and these days I was becoming cautious about leaving an electronic trail when it wasn’t absolutely necessary.
“Zorah, you’ve got blood all down your arm,” Len pointed out.
“I’ll take care of the room,” Rans said, though there was weariness behind his voice.
He hauled himself out of the car with something less than his usual grace, and trudged into the office. I half-expected him to mind-whammy the guy at the front desk just to save time and effort, but I saw money change hands as I peered nervously through the glass double doors. A few minutes later, Rans emerged with a key and stalked toward a room about halfway along the length of the building.
Len followed him and parked the car. I was out of the back seat before the engine went silent, grabbing the key from Rans and stabbing it into the lock. The room was… about what you’d expect for a place like this, with questionable stains on the carpet and the smell of stale cigarette smoke hanging in the air. I hustled Rans inside, aware that Len was guiding Tristan in behind us.
“Sit on the bed, Tris,” Len ordered, pushing Tristan’s pliant body down and turning on the bedside lamp. “Let me see your stomach again.”
“His stomach is perfectly fine,” Rans said. “How many times do I have to repeat that?”
Len’s gray eyes snapped with anger. “His stomach had a goddamned bullet in it, and I’ll fucking well check it again for myself.”
Rans waved a weary hand in a ‘whatever’ gesture. Len disappeared into the bathroom and returned with a damp washrag, which he used to get the rest of the blood off Tristan’s torso.
“You should sit down, too,” I told Rans. He grunted acknowledgement, but only conceded to rest a hip against the heavy dresser holding the TV.
“This is just… impossible,” Len muttered, staring at the unblemished skin of Tristan’s belly. Tristan just blinked up at him. Len cupped a hand over his cheek. “Okay, Tris. You’re all right, yeah? You’re fine. Stay here for me, okay? Just hang out here for a few minutes while I check the others.”
“I’m okay, Len,” I said quickly. “But Rans isn’t. You were an EMT, you said?”
Len’s face went carefully blank. “Yeah. Used to be. But EMT does not equal doctor, Zorah. I still say we should take him to a hospital.”
“Hello. Vampire here,” Rans said impatiently. “Already dead. No pulse, no respiration beyond what I use to speak; not much the doctors can do for me at this point. Now come into the bathroom where it will be easier to clean up the blood afterward, and cut this fucking silver out of me. After seeing her mum get shot when she was a tiny lass, Zorah understandably doesn’t do well with gore.”
“I’ll look at the wounds,” Len retorted. “That’s all I’m committing to.”
“See, Len. Here’s the thing,” Rans growled. “I’d much prefer not to have to go in from the front and do it myself, but these bullets are coming out—one way or another. Now, either come along and give me your educated opinion, or fuck off and get out of my way.”
With that, he pushed away from the dresser he’d been leaning against and took one step toward the bathroom before his knees buckled.
“Rans!” I cried, lunging for him at the same instant Len did.
We managed to keep him upright, Len cursing a blue streak the whole time.
“…’m fine,” Rans mumbled unconvincingly. “Jus’ moved too fast, is all.”
“I don’t know how the hell he’s even upright at this point,” Len muttered.
We manhandled him into the bathro
om, Len taking most of his weight as I teetered dangerously on my ridiculous heels. Once there, I peeled off his long leather coat and tossed it aside. Len shoved the shower curtain out of the way and we sat Rans on the edge of the tub, half-turned so his back was facing the fluorescent strip light above the sink.
“Three entrance wounds; no exit wounds,” Len said. “There should be way more blood than this. Vampire thing, I’m guessing?”
I nodded, trapping my lower lip between my teeth.
“The bullets wouldn’t be an issue,” Rans said hoarsely, “only silver is anathema to vampires. Silver through the heart is one of the very few ways to kill my kind.”
“Thought you told me you were already dead,” Len muttered, still prodding at the skin around the entrance wounds. He stuck a couple of fingers under Rans’ jaw, pressing into his neck. “Jesus. You were serious about your heart not beating.”
“No, Len,” Rans said through gritted teeth, “I was fucking joking with you, because this whole thing is one big laugh-fest. Of course I was bleedin’ serious. Now take one of the daggers and cut these damned bullets out of me before I decide I need a top-off from the most irritating source of platelets within arms’ reach.”
“Shut up, asshole. I saw your idea of battlefield surgery earlier,” Len said, “and if you think I’m going to slice your torso open with an unsterilized knife in a motel bathroom that’s probably harboring more communicable disease organisms than the CDC—”
“Len,” I interrupted softly. “You don’t understand. You can’t kill him. The first time I saw him, he’d collapsed in my garden shed after taking a shotgun blast through the chest. Through the chest, Len. There was a big gaping hole in the center of the ribcage, and ten minutes later he woke up and tore the door off the shed from the inside.”
Len stared at me, as though trying to decide if I were delusional or not.
My lips thinned. “If I’m nuts, then so are you. You just checked his pulse, and you saw Tristan’s stomach heal practically before your eyes. Rans needs that silver out, and I don’t think…” I swallowed, hating my weakness. “I don’t think I can do it.”
“Okay.” Gray eyes softened incrementally, and Len rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. “Okay, fine. One of the bullets looks like it hit a rib. It’s not buried all that deeply under the skin. I can probably take that one out without doing much more damage, and we’ll see from there.”
“Saints be praised,” Rans gritted out. “Anytime you feel like getting started…”
I nodded in relief and took a seat on the closed toilet lid, where I could watch Rans’ face without also having a front row ticket to Len prying the bullet out of him. Len washed his hands and the dagger blade with soap and the hottest water the sink would produce, scrubbing for well over a minute.
“That’s completely unnecessary,” Rans complained wearily.
“Humor me,” Len bit out, adding under his breath, “Jesus. I must be out of my fucking mind…”
He returned to the tub and positioned Rans so his blood would drip into it. I took Rans’ hands in mine, scowling at him when he rolled his eyes at me. I could see Len frowning in concentration behind him. Rans didn’t so much as twitch, and a few moments later, something metal clinked against the porcelain of the tub bottom.
“That’s one,” Len said in a grim voice. Then his eyebrows went up, the piercing in the left one glinting under the harsh lighting. “Holy. Shit.”
“I tried to tell you,” Rans said. “Now, will you stop pussyfooting around and get the other two?”
Len was still staring. “But… your flesh. It just… closed up. In seconds.”
I thought I heard Rans’ teeth grinding together, so I stepped in. “Len, he’s serious when he says you can just get in there and get the bullets however you need to, and it will be fine. Please… just do it?”
“Though if you could avoid pushing the one lodged behind my clavicle into my heart by accident, that would probably be for the best,” Rans added.
“This is nuts,” Len said, for the second or third time in the last few minutes. “Okay, then. Brace yourself.”
I was perfectly content not to see exactly what Len had to do to get the other two bullets out. Rans sat like a statue, neither breathing nor flinching as two more clinks marked the removal of the remaining two projectiles. By the time he was done, Len was gray in the face again, but he continued to watch Rans’ back with sick fascination as it healed.
“That is utterly unreal,” he said. Then his eyes shifted to meet mine. “Of course, so is your shoulder. About those answers, Zorah…”
My gaze slid away from his. “Yeah, um. Rans, do you need some of my blood? Between the bullets and what you gave to Tristan—”
Deflection for the win.
Rans sighed. “Yes, I need to feed. But I’d also prefer not to be sporting a raging hard-on whenever our demon decides to show up.”
Right. The demon. I’d nearly managed to forget about her.
Meanwhile, Len’s expression was creeping back toward, ‘Oh, god, I’m locked in a motel room with crazy people.’ And I did feel pretty bad about asking, but still—
“Can he have some of your blood, Len?”
There. Because that was hardly weird at all, right?
Len stood up rather abruptly. Rans casually popped the closure on the silver rings still piercing his nipples and pulled them out, giving the baubles a careless toss into the tub with the bullets. Then he stretched his back, grimacing a bit as the freshly healed muscles pulled.
“Don’t worry, mate,” he said without turning around. “Your neck is safe unless you offer it voluntarily. I owe you one for this, even if you were as slow as fucking molasses about it.”
There wasn’t very far to go in the tiny bathroom, and Len had fetched up against the vanity after his second step backward. He didn’t lunge for the open door in a panic, though. Instead, he swallowed once and met my eyes.
I tried to plaster a reassuring expression onto my face. “If it helps,” I said, “I’ve done the blood donor routine for him several times, now. Haven’t sprouted fangs or turned into a bat yet.”
Rans turned to pin me with a look of disbelief. “A bat?”
I shrugged.
Len consciously peeled himself away from the sink counter. “You saved Tristan’s life,” he said slowly.
Rans tilted his head, not arguing the point. “He put himself in the path of a bullet to try and protect a stranger. Letting him bleed out would have been rather a shit thing to do.”
“He’s not going to be able to handle this,” Len said in a rush. “I know him. This’ll be too much for him.”
Rans made a considering noise. “I saw the lad was wearing a St. Jude pendant. Religious type, is he?”
Len’s eyes slid closed for a moment as he nodded. “Devout Catholic, yeah. At least, as devout as you can be when you’re a gay man shacking up with his live-in boyfriend. But… this kind of shit? Vampires? Demons?” He paused, as though debating whether to say more. “Jesus. He’s only been out of treatment for five months.”
“Treatment for what?” I asked quietly.
“He was hospitalized for major depressive disorder with acute anxiety,” Len said in a monotone. “He’s still on some pretty heavy duty meds.”
“And yet, he risked his life for someone he didn’t know,” Rans said. “Your lad may be stronger than you think.”
“It’s got nothing to do with strength,” Len snapped. “It’s an illness! Like it matters how brave someone is when they’ve got cancer or an aneurysm!”
“That’s not what he meant,” I said, though I of all people could understand his frustration.
Len seemed to master himself with a slow, deep breath. “Yeah, I know that. Look.” He met Rans’ eyes directly. “You need to make him forget the details of what happened. You can do that, right? Make him think we just went to a bar after an evening out, and maybe the alcohol reacted badly with his meds or someth
ing. Do that for me, and I’ll put my jugular on tap out of gratitude.”
“Yes, I can do that,” Rans said. “And what about you?”
Len’s brow furrowed. “What about me?”
“Do you want to forget, as well?” Rans asked patiently.
Len opened his mouth, only to close it again.
“I… no,” he said eventually. “I can’t just forget something like this. It’s too big.”
Rans lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, I assure you. You could.”
Watching the little drama play out, I was caught between the selfish desire for someone else that knew me to actually understand what was going on in my life, and the knowledge of how unfair it was to ask Len to live with this earth-shattering revelation about the nature of our world.
“Len,” I said. “You have to realize—this will change your life forever. God knows, it’s turned mine completely upside down. I’m starting to believe I may never be able to step out of my door without the risk of something happening like what happened tonight. I think… maybe you should let him wipe your memory.”
THIRTEEN
LEN AND I LOOKED at each other for several long seconds. I could see thoughts and misgivings tumbling behind his eyes, along with a certain stubbornness that reminded me a bit too much of looking in a mirror.
“No. I disagree,” he said finally. “If what you say is true—if Tris and I might be in danger somehow, now that we’ve been drawn into this—then one of us needs to know what’s going on. Otherwise we’re just sitting ducks.”
A lump rose in my throat at the idea that I’d pulled them both into the kind of peril that seemed to define my life now. Goddamn it, it was bad enough that I’d dragged Rans down with me—condemning the last vampire on Earth to die whenever my mortal life ended.
Assuming, of course, that he didn’t end up getting himself killed first while trying to protect me from the crisis of the day.
“I’m so sorry, Len,” I blurted.
Len frowned. “For what? The fact that people are trying to kill you and we got caught in the crossfire?”
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